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Family of Ebola-stricken nurse says she wasn’t ‘careless’ in flying

The family of Ebola-stricken nurse Amber Vinson said it has retained an attorney and lashed out at the media on Sunday, calling the perception that the 29-year-old Dallas nurse knowingly endangered passengers on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas “untrue.”

Washington D.C. attorney Billy Martin, who has represented Monica Lewinski’s mother and Michael Vick, will advise Vinson’s family as it fights to change the way her actions were characterized.

“In no way was Amber careless prior to or after her exposure to Mr. Thomas Eric Duncan,” the family said in a statement. “She has not and would not knowingly expose herself or anyone else.”

Vinson, who was part of the medical team who treated Thomas Eric Duncan — the first diagnosed case of Ebola in the U.S. — at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, tried to take extra precautions once fellow nurse Nina Pham came down with the deadly virus on Oct. 10, two days after Duncan’s death.

“During this conversation, Amber, unsettled by the news of Ms. Pham, asked if arrangements could be made for her to fly her back to Dallas on Sunday as a precaution,” the family said. “Amber was particularly concerned considering that Ms. Pham, being a capable nurse who followed the same Dallas county mandates, had become infected.”